Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Crochet Hats and Wristies

I've been having way too much fun lately with my spinning wheel and a crochet hook. I decided that my sweetie and I needed matching hats and wrist warmers to keep us extra toasty on the Playa. I started with two different rovings in lime green, orange, and yellow. The shades of the colors were different in the two rovings, which is how I created these rich color variations. I dyed one of the rovings with Wilton's cake dyes (shown earlier) and purchased the other from Cloudlover69.

I spun four full bobbins of thick-and-thin singles, about 7 ounces total. I used a little more than half for the hat, and the rest for the gloves. I got the idea for the hat from Lexi Boeger's book Intertwined. It's the Urban Hobbit Hat. Lexi's idea for this hat is to assign a different stitch for each color. I used single crochet for green, half double and double crochet for yellow, and bobbles in orange. When I made the gloves, though, I omitted all of the bobbles on the palm of the hand, thought they'd just get in the way.

Here's what the set looks like with the fake fur jacket I made.

My sweetie and I are both quite partial to orange and lime, but I made this set for him. Since he kept claiming I'd wear the hat more than he does, I had to make another set for myself.

This one uses a blue roving from Chimera and an aqua and pink one I died with Wilton's cake dyes that I showed earlier. For this set, I decided to change the texture as well as the color, so I ditched the bobbles, and I instead used puffs in blue and bullions in pink, along with lots of single and half double crochet. I also added some ties to keep it on my head in the wind. To make the ties, I knit I-cord with two stitches in each row, and then switched to a crochet hook to make a big old stuffed bobble at the ends. Now, I need to go back and add ties to the orange hat. What I learned: I finally learned how to make a bullion in crochet. They're super squishy and feel nice. I learned that wristies fit better when you add a few stitches around the thumb before going onto the wrist part. In the orange set, I crocheted back and forth to create the thumb hole, but in the blue pair, I just added a few stitches around the thumb instead. Adding stitches was easier and the glove fits better.